Double the disc space on a server?

[g4girl]

Hi, I have a DELL Server,P3,windows 2000 server OS:
it is configured in a dual raid of 2-250GB drives in 50/50 partitions. I think the tech said the word "mirror" also..
My question is - Can I just take one of the 250GB drives out and set in a new 500GB 50/50 drive in place....will it magically put it in service? Then, after it has all that data, can I place a 2nd 500GB 50/50 drive in to service, and end up with a double the original capacity?

I dont think we can afford a new server right now... I am hoping to just get some more capacity.

.... and will this one work? (it costs $85 each)

Thank you,
DawnH


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[kamkal]

Trying to understand what you are trying to accomplish...

So your space is at 250GB now? With two drives that are mirroring each other? This is known as RAID 1 mode (mirroring)
a 50/50 split is a completely different mode called striping (RAID mode 0). The way it is setup now means each 250Gb drive has all of the data so that if one fails, you have a on the fly backup. A 50/50 split would mean that each drive would have only roughly half the data and if one of the drives fail, all of your data is gone..the 50/50 method is used mostly to increase speed and not for sensitive data

So You want to take out one 250Gb drive and replace it with a 500GB so that you now have a 500Gb drive mirroring one of the 250gb drives?

And then replace the remaining 250GB drive (after the raid system copies the data to the first 500GB drive) with another 500GB drive and then have the data copied from the 1st 500gb to the 2nd one??

I mean thats a lot of work and it depends on how good the raid controller is in terms of copying the data and all that, you could just add in another 500GB hard drive and use it separately from the 2x250gb drives you just wouldnt have the mirroring going on unless your raid controller can setup two raid 1 arrays, which would mean you would still have the 2x250GB drives plus 2x500GB and this would show up as your regular c: drive (the 2x250gb raid 1 array) and like drive f: (the 2x500gb raid 1 array) in windows

The hitachi drives should work fine provided that your server's IDE/RAID controller can handle the 500GB capacity (since this is a P3 server) but if not you can get a cheap raid controller addin card that can be put into a PCI slot

 

[g4girl]

Trying to understand what you are trying to accomplish...

So your space is at 250GB now? With two drives that are mirroring each other? This is known as RAID 1 mode (mirroring)
a 50/50 split is a completely different mode called striping (RAID mode 0). The way it is setup now means each 250Gb drive has all of the data so that if one fails, you have a on the fly backup. A 50/50 split would mean that each drive would have only roughly half the data and if one of the drives fail, all of your data is gone..the 50/50 method is used mostly to increase speed and not for sensitive data

So You want to take out one 250Gb drive and replace it with a 500GB so that you now have a 500Gb drive mirroring one of the 250gb drives?

And then replace the remaining 250GB drive (after the raid system copies the data to the first 500GB drive) with another 500GB drive and then have the data copied from the 1st 500gb to the 2nd one??

I mean thats a lot of work and it depends on how good the raid controller is in terms of copying the data and all that, you could just add in another 500GB hard drive and use it separately from the 2x250gb drives you just wouldnt have the mirroring going on unless your raid controller can setup two raid 1 arrays, which would mean you would still have the 2x250GB drives plus 2x500GB and this would show up as your regular c: drive (the 2x250gb raid 1 array) and like drive f: (the 2x500gb raid 1 array) in windows

The hitachi drives should work fine provided that your server's IDE/RAID controller can handle the 500GB capacity (since this is a P3 server) but if not you can get a cheap raid controller addin card that can be put into a PCI slot

Hi, Thank you for responding. I seem to have not mentioned that it has a max capacity of 111GB right now. I was hoping to swap the 250's for 500's and hopefully double our space... we are at 90% now, and have done serious weeding already.
If it is possible, that would be a great benefit to our data safety. Thanks again.
Dawn

 

[Ijack]

As kamkal says, it depends upon the RAID controller (and the assumption that your disks are mirrored). I've done this several times on IBM servers with RAID 5 arrays - you just pull a disk out, put the new one in, let it rebuild, and repeat the process with each disk. You then need to create a new logical drive to use the additional space, or some controllers will let you increase the size of an array.

I don't quite understand your setup. You say you have 2 x 250GB drives but a max capacity of 111 GB. What's happened to the other 139GB?

What I would say is that if you're not totally comfortable with doing this sort of thing then DON'T. Get someone who knows to do it for you. You can lose several hundred Gigabytes of data far quicker than you can recover it. It's very easy to get things wrong. I would never have performed such a procedure on a live server without having practised on a spare one first. And you do have complete, tested backups, don't you, and are comfortable with reinstalling the OS?

 

[zapf]

And even if you upgraded the HDD's to larger capacity. The size of the windows Partition will still be the same old. Have you thought about that?

What you should budget for.
1.) HDD to backup your server.
2.) Software to backup your server.
3.) Time to test the backup.
4.) 2 x New drives.
5.) Possible downtime if things do not go to plan.
6.) Have plan A, B & C

 

[jkieth]

I would have to agree with ijack. Don't go messing around with your data if you're not backed up somehwere else. Losing your data is too easy and too expensive to be implementing suggestions from a forum without having ever tried the suggestion before. If you're safe and you know the data is backed up somehwere else then go ahead and swap out the 250 with the 500 and see if your RAID controller works for you. There's my two cents